Kontakte – Das Jahrbuch der KIT-Fakultät für Architektur 2023

An Ongoing Dialogue —
How Objects Can Talk to Us
Mechthild Ebert
Christoph Engel
The saai | Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering
builds on an old inventory of the architecture department
of the Polytechnical University Karlsruhe — today KIT
— and has continued to grow thanks to numerous donations
since its foundation in 1989. This growth is also reflected in
the constant search of and need for suitable space. Archives
are not just places of storage, they are understood as cultural
memory, places of knowledge production and future resources.
Archives are not static, they are alive, they can give impulses,
enter into a dialogue. Material is viewed, packed for
archival purposes, inventoried, different measures are taken
to preserve it, it’s researched and stored.
Only a few objects are presented to the public at
large in exhibitions or publications. In the archive they
all stand side by side, seemingly without a hierarchical order.
Models in particular are a frequently used object of architecture
communication. As working models, they can refer
to the design and form-finding process, as measurement models,
to determine forces and deformations of supporting
structures, as mock-ups, faithfully anticipating the formation
of a detail or section, or serve for presentation as replicated
models.
As part of the preparations for the exhibition
Building for an Open Society. Günter Behnisch 100
Christoph Engel recorded impressions of one saai depot.
150 Bildessay